Ye Lowly Human
by Autumn de Briar
Summary: It took three days to pinpoint the yearbook in question... and when he says three days, he means all twenty four hours of those days, all seventy two hours combined. Which may seem exhausting to some people, and he knew it was going to hit him in a few hours, but to be honest, without his Adderall, insomnia was like an old friend.


It had been going on for a while, to be honest. The last few weeks, everything was calm and quiet so Derek had the wolves go over to his place for some training. Since Stiles wasn't a wolf, he wasn't invited. Thing is, Lydia always went. He wasn't sure if it was because of Jackson or because of Peter but either way, she got to go and he didn't.

Not that he was angry at her for it. It was kind of a silly thing to be angry at her about considering it probably wasn't even in her control anyway. Well, this was Lydia and she was smart enough to talk her way out of anything, or into anything, including meetings with wolves so maybe it was partly her fault. But he wasn't going to assume anything. Except for the fact that she was allowed to go and he wasn't. Which wasn't necessarily assuming considering the first time he'd gone, she'd been there, smiling and playing with Jackson's hair as Derek had yelled at him and told him to go home.

He cringed as he remembered the scene. Oftentimes, Derek got in his face for something or other, but usually he did it alone and usually he kept his voice low. This time, they were surrounded by the entire pack (hell, Scott had been on the phone with Allison at the time so he was pretty sure even she heard it) and it certainly wasn't in a low tone. It was almost like being yelled at in front of the entire class for doing something you didn't even know was against the rules. Or for doing the homework wrong. At least you'd tried, right? But no, this was worse because in a class, your friend might give you a sympathetic squeeze on the shoulder or a sympathetic smile behind the teacher's back. Here, all of his friends were present and none of them were even looking at him, much less acting sympathetic.

He was pretty sure his entire face had been red, all the way to his ears, as he'd hopped in his car and took off down the road. Whatever, he'd had a test to study for anyway, which he'd aced. Somehow, remembering the A on the test made him smile because he'd caught a glimpse at Scott's test results a few days later and, yeah, nowhere near as good as his and, sure, he was still stung a bit from the rude dismissal he'd gotten a few days before at Derek's place, and hey, karma's a bitch, right?

That was all a few weeks ago. He'd been shunned ever since. Sure, Scott let him in on some of the information, the ins and outs of what was going on, but it was with lots of prodding, negotiating, and yes he'd even resorted to blackmail. There was one time Scott had accidentally sent a text to Stiles instead of Allison and he'd kept the text for solely that reason - to torture Scott whenever the need arose. Actually, he'd deleted it as soon as he'd read it, fearing for the safety of his own eyes if he ever accidentally read it again, but Scott didn't need to know that.

Recently, Scott had informed him of a new pack in town. Offhandedly, as if it was none of his concern, almost as if he was discussing a discussion he'd had with someone about some movie he couldn't even remember the name of because it sucked so bad. Yeah, it was that vague.

Which truly annoyed Stiles, in a seeing red kind of fashion, because his best friend was a part of the pack and his first love was at least kind of sort of part of the pack and people he cared about were in danger because a new pack was in town and everyone knew that a new pack in town meant danger to the old pack in town and was it really that bad and insane that he wanted to be included when things like this happened?

Also, he'd had Scott and Derek in his car before and, one day after school when Scott had rushed off to go to work and Lydia and Jackson were nowhere to be seen, one of the members of the new pack in town had jumped right into his car, stating they could smell the Alpha all over the car and that if valued his life, he should drive.

Of course, it was this little drive that led to Stiles being way more informed than he'd even dreamed of being before and, let's face it, an informed Stiles is a much more formidable opponent than an uninformed Stiles.

Still, when Derek, Scott, and Jackson had all disappeared, things got a little scary. For one, Lydia and Allison went all badass on him, drilling him on what he could possibly know about the new pack in town. Which was far less than they knew and actually kind of pissed him off that they would practically interrogate him as if he was the one keeping secrets and not them. When they'd accepted that he knew no more, and in fact a good deal less, than they did, they left, apparently with a plan in mind, though neither of them decided to inform him of this plan. Neither did he ask because, truth be told, he had his own plan that he hadn't told them about. They asked about the past and really, all he knew was the future.

At one point, he'd heard a name. The wolf who'd jumped into his car had been a female, long black hair, dark eyes except for when they'd flashed gold which was probably meant to intimidate Stiles. She'd let slip a name, just a single name, but he remembered a few days later that when he'd been going through a yearbook one time, probably for one of his father's cases, he'd seen the name.

It took three days to pinpoint the yearbook in question, then to scan until he found the name, then go to the library and research what had happened to that person, and voila, he'd found what he had been looking for.

And when he says three days, he means all twenty four hours of those days, all seventy two hours combined. Which may seem exhausting to some people, and he knew it was going to hit him in a few hours, but to be honest, without his Adderall, insomnia was like an old friend.

He knew they had probably heard him coming, considering wolf hearing and wolf smelling, but he was human, as Derek had so kindly reminded him, and humans were practically nothing to wolves unless they were hunters. He was nothing to them. For a moment, he stopped to think about that. That he was nothing. It would be really easy for him to just turn around, ignore everything, pretend nothing existed, because that was probably what Derek and Scott wanted at the moment anyway, and Jackson was probably apathetic, though if Lydia ever found out he was this close and had turned away she would never forgive him. But that wasn't what made him continue on. It was that turning away wasn't really a choice to him. Turning his back on friends isn't something that is an option or a choice. You just don't do it.

So yes, he was nothing. Puny human compared to all-powerful wolves. All-powerful wolves who had been kidnapped and possibly tortured and may very well be killed in the near future, if they weren't already. Which was a scary thought.

Without letting that thought digress him any further, he pushes open the door.

"We were wondering how long it would take you to gather the courage to come in here." There is a man, red eyes, partially wolfed out, standing to the right with a mildly amused look on his face. Stiles is relieved to see Derek, Scott, and Jackson strung up to the wall on the left. Not that he was relieved that they were strung up but more that they all were looking at him. As in, their eyes were not glossy and vacant with death. Of course, looking at their eyes made him a little self-conscious considering all of them were angry.

"Ha, I wasn't working up the _courage_ to come in here," he says. "I was actually just wondering if these goofballs were worth it."

"Stiles," Derek says, which is more a growl than an actual word, which was rather amusing to be honest, that Derek was growling at Stiles while Derek was the one dangling beaten and bloody and Stiles was pretty much whole. A little hyperactive and flighty but still whole.

"They're not," the man says. Stiles doesn't miss the way the girl wolf from his car and another, unfamiliar wolf start to circle him. "I'm not sure what you think you can do but I assure you, you will fail. However, your loyalty is admirable. Perhaps I will make you a part of my pack once these three consent to join."

"Oh that's what you're doing," Stiles says, partially to himself. He honestly hadn't even been sure what was going on here. One minute, everyone is just kind of hanging out and the next minute, his three wolfy friends disappear. Isaac had already disappeared a few weeks prior to that. Stiles still wasn't entirely sure where he went but once he gets these guys out of here, he'll be the hero and they won't be able to ignore his questions. Well, knowing them, they might try, but he'll guilt-trip them into telling him. Actually, that probably won't work either, except maybe on Scott, but if Scott is around Derek then it probably won't work. If he worked his cards just right, he might be able to shame Derek into telling him. But that would be a slippery slope because if he played his cards wrong, he'd be stepping on Derek's toes and Derek might get all protective and territorial. Stiles shook his head, trying to remember what had been said last. Oh, right. "Yeah, I don't think so. I already said no to the bite once and I'm pretty sure the more it's offered, the more I'll say no but hey, thanks for asking."

He takes this moment to throw a glass cylinder onto the floor to his right, away from the Hale pack, right in front of the girl from his car. She starts to grin as if to say, 'You missed me' but then she realizes what was in the cylinder and she coughs, backing away from him.

"Keep your dogs on a leash, please," Stiles says. "I don't want to hurt them any more than necessary. Also, let my dogs go. They're overdue for their daily walks."

The three wolves he refers to as dogs start to growl and he sees Derek's eyes go a little red. He grins a little.

"And what makes you think we'll let them go just because you say so?"

Stiles throws a bag at the man. He thinks offhandedly how odd it is that he doesn't even know this man's name. Last name, yes, but not the first name.

As he looks inside, his face loses its humor and he looks at Stiles in surprise.

"That's just a tiny piece," Stiles says. "There's more where that came from. And if I know you, you're going to want the other pieces. However, if I don't get back to my colleague within the hour, the other pieces just... they'll be just ash," he says with a mock-sympathetic shrug of the shoulders.

And Stiles knows this is the tricky part. The part where the man might say no, he really isn't as sentimental as Stiles had assumed and maybe this just pisses him off enough that he doesn't care about making his pack bigger or better and he'll just kill them all. Or maybe he is that sentimental and maybe he'll attack Stiles knowing that Stiles is weak and might give in under pressure. But then the man has to wonder, who is his colleague and can he get to him within an hour? Peter is in the graveyard with the rest of the bones, bones of the man who had been this man's brother, with instructions that if Stiles didn't get in touch with him within an hour to turn the bones to ash, just like he'd said. Peter had wanted the roles reversed but Stiles had made the point that if Peter went, his smell would have alerted them far earlier than Stiles and also would have put them on the offensive. Stiles could use his humanity as a faux-weakness, put them off guard, and use it to back them into a corner.

"How did you find these?"

Maybe Stiles shouldn't tell him. Maybe it would be a bad idea for everyone and their mother to know that his father is the Sheriff. But when Stiles gets done with this guy, if all goes according to plan, then they'll never have to see this guy again. And maybe sleep deprivation is making Stiles' brain-to-mouth filter a little less efficient than normal. "I got connections in the police force. Sometimes I read the files. Sometimes I remember the files. And sometimes I remember stories about crazy family members who give such grand, spectacular, elegant funerals to their loved ones that it's practically a festival. And sometimes I remember that those crazy family members attacked people who even dared to go near the casket to pay their respects. Sometimes I remember these stories."

The man's face is now red with anger, red enough that Stiles is a little surprised he doesn't see blisters forming, but Stiles is unaffected. He knows that he spent three days without sleep, without showering, barely eating anything except five hour energy drinks and redbull, and then spent around six hours digging up the grave. Even if he had enough energy and sense to feel afraid, he was pretty sure no one would be able to smell it over all the other smells.

A part of him found it quite odd that he was getting used to his friends being able to smell things from him that he never even thought was possible before. Odd that he was getting so used to it that he was almost able to plan for it and use it against them. He wondered briefly if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Or maybe it was just a thing.

"Let them go," the man says to his packmates.

"Hold up a minute there, Bonzo," Stiles says and he's not sure where he gets the name Bonzo from but he's pretty sick of referring to the guy as 'the man' and he's certainly not going to ask him, this late in the game, what his name is and if he did ask him what his name is, the guy might start to wonder if those are really his brother's bones he dug up, which they are, so that would be an awkward argument right there. Bonzo works just as good as any name and possibly even better, considering all the Bobs and Johns there are out there. Bonzo is good. "You're going to let them go and then get the hell out of dodge. I don't want you or your pack anywhere near Beacon Hills ever again."

"As if we want to come back to this town," the woman mutters under her breath but everyone can hear her, even Stiles the Lowly Human.

"I want you to swear on his bones," Stiles says.

"I swear on the bones of my brother my pack will never step foot into the territory of Beacon Hills or the Hale pack ever again. As soon as the rest of his bones are in my custody, we will leave."

Sure, wolves can lie. He wouldn't even be able to tell if he was lying because it's not like he can hear the telltale beat of the heart, and maybe wolves can train their own hearts to beat at a regular pace anyway like the people who can beat the polygraph so maybe it wouldn't even matter if he could hear their heartbeats or not. And there are other ways to tell if a person is lying, like where their eyes go or if they lick their lips or touch their face, but Stiles is in absolutely no state of mind appropriate for paying attention to those signs considering his own eyes are flickering all over the room and his mind is kind of jumping all over the place and part of him is starting to panic, just a little, that he might very well pass out in the near future from sheer exhaustion, which has actually happened before so it's not an unwarranted fear. So he considers his options and then nods, accepting.

Derek, Scott, and Jackson are soon on the floor, Derek ripping an arrow out of his abdomen which has a sickening sound but for some reason the sight of it doesn't bother Stiles at all, like it usually does, and Scott is next to him, not touching him but obviously ready if he needed something, and Jackson is just off towards the back growling, Stiles can't see him but he can hear him, and Bonzo is telling him to call his contact and yes, that's exactly what he should be doing, so he pulls out his phone and sends Peter the all clear message that they'd agreed on earlier. He relays the information about where Bonzo can pick up the bones, a place Peter and Stiles had decided on earlier, and after the third time he unconsciously refers to the guy as Bonzo, Scott elbows him hard in the ribs and whispers, even though everyone can hear him, "His name is Jerrick," and that's when he realizes that everyone, including Derek, has been steadily increasing the volume of their growls every time he refers to Jerrick as Bonzo and he figures it's some sort of wolf thing to treat even your enemies with respect so he repeats the last thing he said with the guy's real name and the tension in the room eases somewhat. And then Scott is pulling him outside and Stiles is struggling with his feet because they don't seem to want to go one in front of the other like they're supposed to, so focuses on walking and ignores everything else.

His inability to walk right acts as a light bulb that all the adrenalin he'd been using was no longer needed, that he could finally calm down, shut off, and relax so he mumbles something about going to a diner and Scott struggles at first but Stiles somehow says something to convince him, something about how he hasn't eaten in three days and he stopped taking the Adderall and he just needs some diner food, so Scott is convinced and before he knows it, they're at the diner.

At some point as he's stuffing his face with pancakes, Scott excuses himself and goes outside, and Stiles is pretty sure he heard Allison's name in there somewhere and part of him wants to roll his eyes and he's pretty sure he would have if the waitress hadn't set down a second cup of coffee and suddenly Stiles is grinning like an idiot at the waitress because he knows as soon as the coffee is in him and getting digested, he's going to start feeling sleepy the way most people feel sleepy after a mighty dose of chamomile tea and NyQuil and that sounds wonderful to him so he gulps it down with just a tiny bit of cream and sugar and even though it burns, it kind of burns in a pleasant way, and then there's Derek sitting across from him and part of him is startled but another part of him feels everything in such a detached kind of way that he doesn't even react to it, just goes with the flow.

"Let me guess: Allison was worried about Scott and Scott was worried about Allison and now they're off talking or necking or the 2012 version of parking and you're going to drive me home and make sure I don't fall asleep at the wheel, right? Because if you don't drive me home, I probably will fall asleep at the wheel and then I won't have the opportunity to gloat tomorrow and the next day and the next day about how the silly little human was able to save the big bad wolves from the other big bad wolves and as much as that would coincide with the theme of my life, it doesn't make it fair and I'd really rather stay alive to gloat so please drive me home, okay?"

"Why are you drinking coffee at eleven o'clock at night?"

Of course Derek would not only change the subject without answering his question but he changes it to something so ridiculously stupid that Stiles doesn't even really want to answer him, so he shoves another forkful of pancakes in his mouth, feeling his eyelids droop just a little bit and he feels every muscle in his mouth working, his jaw feels like it's upset about doing overtime but he can't understand that because he hasn't even eaten but then he remembers that sometimes when he gets stressed he grinds his teeth so he was probably grinding his teeth a lot the last three days so he sends a mental apology to the muscles in his jaw and promises sleep is on the horizon and that if his jaw just continues for a little bit longer, then his body will get the sustenance it needs to maintain the muscles and keep them strong and healthy so this is really for their benefit as much as for his and yes, he is speaking to his own muscles but it's kind of the only thing keeping him awake because Derek doesn't like to talk except for asking really stupid questions, which, oh yeah, Stiles hasn't answered yet.

"It makes me sleepy."

One of Derek's eyebrows lift as if Stiles is feeding him a really stupid lie and that kind of irks Stiles because really, after three days of running around to save werewolves' asses, does he really think Stiles wants to drink coffee to stay awake even longer? What would that accomplish?

"I stopped taking my Adderall and coffee kind of acts as a depressant instead of a stimulant for me."

Derek tilts his head to the side as Stiles cleans the rest of his plate and drains his cup, releasing a pleased sigh as he leans heavily on his elbows. Derek still has his head tilted, as if listening for something and Stiles knows it could be anything. Maybe he's listening to Allison and Scott. Stiles makes a face. That would be weird.

"Your heart is slowing down." Derek says it as if he is surprised. His eyebrows are creased in confusion for a moment and then he chuckles. Stiles narrows his eyes at him. Did Derek really just chuckle at him? "Interesting."

"Yeah, real interesting," Stiles says with a yawn. "Now pay the lady and let's get out of here."

"Me? Why am I paying?"

Stiles closes his left eye and glares at Derek with his right. "Are you really asking that?"

They stare at each other for another moment and Stiles tries to switch to closing his right eye but it's not as easy so he goes back to using both eyes. He yawns again and that seems to break their stare-off.

"Fine," Derek says. "Go get in the car."

In the passenger seat of Derek's Camaro, Stiles puts on his seatbelt and leans his head against the glass. The next thing he knows, Derek is shaking him awake and he blearily realizes they're at his house.

"Huh," he says stupidly and crawls out of the car. He feels sluggish and his muscles are trying to refuse movement. He's slightly scared he's going to sink to the sidewalk and not be able to get up which he's pretty sure he'd be okay with but his dad might get a little freaked out about it so he hopes his muscles hold out. A hand under his elbow holds him up and there's Derek, leading him into the house. Thankfully, his father still isn't home so they don't have to answer any questions just yet but he knows some of the neighbors keep an eye on him for his dad's sake so who knows who might be looking out their window seeing a strange man leading Stiles into the house and feel the need to pass on that information to his father?

Inside, they make it to Stiles' bedroom, where he crawls onto the bed and does a face plant.

End First Chapter

Author's Note: I'm not entirely sure what just happened. I wasn't expecting this. I'm pretty sure I just got glomped by a plot bunny who wouldn't go away until its story was told and that plot bunny may have been Stiles Stilinski. Again, I'm not entirely sure what just happened.


End file.
